David copperfield net worth

David Copperfield

– novel by Charles Dickens

This article is about the novel by Charles Dickens. For the American illusionist, see David Copperfield (illusionist). For other uses, see David Copperfield (disambiguation).

Cover, first serial edition of

AuthorCharles Dickens
Original&#;titleThe Personal History, Adventures,
Experience and Observation
of David Copperfield
the Younger
of Blunderstone Rookery
IllustratorHablot Knight Browne (Phiz)
Cover&#;artistHablot Knight Browne (Phiz)
LanguageEnglish
GenresNovel, Bildungsroman
PublishedSerialised May – November ; book format
PublisherBradbury & Evans
Publication placeEngland
Media&#;typePrint
Pages (first book edition)[1]
Preceded&#;byDombey and Son&#;
Followed&#;byBleak House&#;

David Copperfield[N 1] is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity.

As such, it is typically categorized in the bildungsroman genre. It was published as a serial in and and then as a book in

David Copperfield is also a partially autobiographical novel:[2] "a very complicated weaving of truth and invention",[3] with events following Dickens's own life.[4] Of the books he wrote, it was his favourite.[5] Called "the triumph of the art of Dickens",[6][7] it marks a turning point in his work, separating the novels of youth and those of maturity.[8]

At first glance, the work is modelled on 18th-century "personal histories" that were very popular, like Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones, but David Copperfield is a more carefully structured work.

It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a bleak picture of childhood in Victorian England, followed by young Copperfield's slow social ascent, as he painfully provides for his aunt, while continuing his studies.[9]

Dickens wrote without an outline, unlike his previous novel, Dombey and Son.

Biography as literary genre of david copperfield summary Through the relationships David forms with characters like Agnes, Peggotty, and even his flawed father figure, Mr. David Copperfield was later illustrated by many artists later, after the serialization, including:. It covers the narrator's life until the day he decides to put an end to his literary endeavor. Other editions [ edit ].

Some aspects of the story were fixed in his mind from the start, but others were undecided until the serial publications were underway.[10] The novel has a primary theme of growth and change, but Dickens also satirises many aspects of Victorian life. These include the plight of prostitutes, the status of women in marriage, class structure, the criminal justice system, the quality of schools, and the employment of children in factories.[11]

Plot summary

The story follows the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity.

David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, England, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years residing in a small house called the Rookery. His loving and childish mother and their kindly housekeeper, Clara Peggotty, bring him up him here, where they call him Davy. When he is seven years old, his mother marries Edward Murdstone without having told him they plan to marry.

To get him out of the way, David is sent to visit Peggotty's family in Yarmouth. Her brother, fisherman Mr Peggotty, lives in a beached barge, with his adopted niece and nephew Emily and Ham, and an elderly widow, Mrs Gummidge. "Little Em'ly" is somewhat spoiled by her fond foster father, and David is in love with her. They call him Master Copperfield.

On his return, David discovers his mother has married and is immediately given good reason to dislike his stepfather, Murdstone, who believes exclusively in stern, harsh methods of parenting, calling it "firmness". David has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Between them, they tyrannise David and his poor mother, making their lives miserable.

When David falls behind in his studies, Murdstone thrashes him, and David bites his hand; in consequence, he is sent away to Salem House, a boarding school, under a ruthless headmaster named Mr Creakle. There he is befriended by an older boy, James Steerforth, and Tommy Traddles. He develops an impassioned admiration for Steerforth, perceiving him as someone noble, who could do great things if he would, and one who pays attention to him.

David goes home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die, and David returns home immediately. Peggotty marries the local carrier, Mr Barkis. Murdstone sends David to work for a wine merchant in London – a business of which Murdstone is a joint owner.

After some months, David's friendly but spendthrift landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is arrested for debt and sent to the King's Bench Prison, and the rest of Mr. Micawber's family soon moves to the Prison too. David visits the Micawbers regularly at the Prison, and boards nearby. When Micawber's release is imminent, the Micawbers decide they will soon move to Plymouth.

David realises that will leave him alone in London, where no one cares about him. He makes up his mind to run away to Dover to find his only known remaining relative, his eccentric and kind-hearted great-aunt Betsey Trotwood. She had come to Blunderstone at his birth, only to depart in ire upon learning that he was not a girl. However, she takes it upon herself to raise David, despite Murdstone's attempt to regain custody of him.

She encourages him to 'be as like his sister, 'Betsey Trotwood' as he can be – that is, to meet the expectations she had for the girl who was never born. David's great-aunt renames him "Trotwood Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", one of several names others call David in the novel.

David's aunt sends him to a better school than the last he attended.

It is run by kind Dr. Strong, whose methods inculcate honour and self-reliance in his pupils. During term, David lodges with the lawyer Mr Wickfield and his daughter Agnes, who becomes David's friend and confidante. Wickfield's clerk, Uriah Heep, also lives at the house.

By devious means, Uriah Heep gradually gains a complete ascendancy over the aging and alcoholic Wickfield, to Agnes's great sorrow.

Heep, as he maliciously confides to David, aspires to marry Agnes. Ultimately with the aid of Micawber, who has been employed by Heep as a secretary, his fraudulent behaviour is revealed. (At the end of the book, David encounters him in prison, convicted of attempting to defraud the Bank of England.)

After completing school, David apprentices to be a proctor.

During this time, due to Heep's fraudulent activities, his aunt's fortune has diminished. David toils to make a living. He works mornings and evenings for his former teacher Dr Strong as a secretary, and also starts to learn shorthand, with the help of his old school-friend Traddles, upon completion reporting parliamentary debate for a newspaper.

With considerable moral support from Agnes and his own great diligence and hard work, David ultimately finds fame and fortune as an author, writing fiction.

David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, also re-acquainted with David, goes on to seduce and dishonour Emily, offering to marry her off to his manservant Littimer before deserting her in Europe.

Her uncle Mr Peggotty manages to find her with the help of Martha, who had grown up in their part of England and then settled in London. Ham, who had been engaged to marry Emily before the tragedy, dies in a fierce storm off the coast while rescuing shipwreck victims. Steerforth was aboard the ship and also dies.

Mr Peggotty takes Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by Mrs Gummidge and the Micawbers, where all eventually find security and happiness.

David, meanwhile, has fallen completely in love with Dora Spenlow, and then marries her. Their marriage proves troublesome for David in the sense of everyday practical affairs, but he never stops loving her.

Dora dies early in their marriage after a miscarriage.

Biblical literary genre He tells David when he first meets him, "you'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready. Steerforth possesses "an inborn power of attraction" and "carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. The exception of Rosa Dartle [ edit ]. London: Wordsworth Classics.

After Dora's death, Agnes encourages David to return to normal life and his profession of writing. While living in Switzerland to dispel his grief over so many losses, David realises that he loves Agnes. Upon returning to Britain, after a failed attempt to conceal his feelings, David finds that Agnes loves him too. They quickly marry, and in this marriage he finds true happiness.

David and Agnes then have at least five children, including a daughter named after his great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood.

Characters

  • David Copperfield – The narrator and protagonist of the novel. David's father, David Sr, dies six months before he is born, and he is raised by his mother and nursemaid Peggotty until his mother remarries.

    David's stepfather, Mr Murdstone, sends David away to a boarding school. While attending school, David learns his mother has died, on his ninth birthday. He is sent to work at a factory until he runs away to find his aunt. David Copperfield is characterised in the book as trusting, goal-oriented, but as yet immature.

    He marries Dora Spenlow and later Agnes Wickfield.

  • Clara Copperfield – David's affectionate and beautiful mother, described as being innocently childish. She is married to David Copperfield Sr until his death, and gives birth six months later to the central character of the novel. She loves and coddles young David with the help of Peggotty.

    Years later she remarries Mr Murdstone. She dies a couple of months after the birth of her second son, who dies a day or so later, while David is away at Salem House boarding school.

  • Clara Peggotty – The faithful servant of the Copperfield family and a lifelong companion to David – she is called by her surname Peggotty within David's family, as her given name is Clara, the same as David's mother; she is also referred to at times as Barkis after her marriage to Mr Barkis.

    After her husband's death, Peggotty helps to put in order David's rooms in London and then returns to Yarmouth to keep house for her nephew, Ham Peggotty. Following Ham's death, she keeps house for David's great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood.

  • Betsey Trotwood – David's eccentric and temperamental yet kind-hearted great-aunt; she becomes his guardian after he runs away from the Murdstone and Grinby warehouse in Blackfriars, London.

    She is present on the night of David's birth but leaves after hearing that Clara Copperfield's child is a boy instead of a girl, and is not seen again until David flees to her house in Dover from London. She is portrayed as affectionate towards David, and defends him and his late mother when Mr Murdstone arrives to take custody of David: she confronts the man and rebukes him for his abuse of David and his mother, then threatens him and drives him off the premises.

    Universally believed to be a widow, she conceals the existence of her ne'er-do-well husband who occasionally bleeds her for money.

  • Dr Edward Chillip – A shy doctor who assists at David's birth and faces the wrath and anger of Betsey Trotwood after he informs her that Clara's baby is a boy instead of the girl Betsey wanted.

    David meets this doctor each time he returns to the neighbourhood of his birth. Mr Chillip, met in London when David Copperfield returns from Switzerland, tells David of the fate of Murdstone's second wife, which is much the same as the fate of David's mother.

  • Mr Barkis – An aloof carter who declares his intention to marry Peggotty after eating her handmade pastries.

    He says to David: "Tell her, 'Barkis is willin'!' Just so." Peggotty marries him after Clara Copperfield's death. He is a miser, keeping an unexpected amount of wealth in a plain box labelled "Old Clothes". He bequeaths two-thirds of his money to his wife from his savings of £3, (about £, in present-day value ()) when he dies after about ten years of marriage.

    He leaves annuities for Mr Daniel Peggotty, Little Emily, and David from the rest.

  • Edward Murdstone – The main antagonist of the first half of the novel, he is Young David's cruel stepfather who beats him for falling behind in his studies and emotionally torments Clara. David reacts by biting Mr Murdstone, and is sent to Salem House – a private school owned by Mr Murdstone's friend Mr Creakle – in retribution.

    After his mother dies, he sends David to work at his factory in London. He appears at Betsey Trotwood's Dover house after David runs away. Mr Murdstone appears to show signs of repentance when confronted by Copperfield's aunt about his treatment of Clara and David, but when David works at Doctors' Commons years later, he meets Murdstone taking out a marriage licence for his next young and trusting wife.

  • Jane Murdstone – Mr Murdstone's equally cruel spinster sister, who moves into the Copperfield house shortly after Mr Murdstone marries Clara Copperfield, taking over the housekeeping.

    Much like her brother she is domineering, mean-spirited, and petty. She is the "Confidential Friend" of David's first wife, Dora Spenlow, and is the one who found David's letters to Dora, and creates the scene between David Copperfield and Dora's father, Mr Spenlow. Later, she rejoins her brother and his second wife in a marriage much like the one with David's mother.

  • Daniel Peggotty – Peggotty's brother; a humble but generous Yarmouth fisherman who takes his nephew Ham and niece Emily into his custody after each of them has been orphaned.

    He welcomes David as a child when holidaying in Yarmouth with Peggotty. When Emily is older and runs away with David's friend Steerforth, he travels around the world in search of her. He eventually finds her as a prostitute in London, and after that, they emigrate to Australia.

  • Emily (Little Em'ly) – The niece of Daniel Peggotty and his sister Clara Peggotty.

    She is a childhood friend of David Copperfield, who loved her in his childhood days. She abandons Ham, her cousin and fiancé, on the eve of their wedding, disappearing abroad with Steerforth for several years. Broken by Steerforth's desertion, she does not go back home, but she does eventually go to London. With the help of Martha, her uncle recovers her from the brink of prostitution, after Rosa Dartle rants at her.

    She accompanies her uncle to Australia.

  • Ham Peggotty – The good-natured nephew of Mr Peggotty who is tall and strong, and becomes a skilled boat builder. He is the fiancé of Emily before she leaves him for Steerforth. His aunt, (Clara) Peggotty, looks after Ham once Emily is gone. When a fierce storm at sea off Yarmouth demasts a merchant ship from the south, Ham attempts to rescue the crew, but is drowned by the ferocity of the waves before he can reach anyone.

    News of his death, a day before Emily and Mr Peggotty's emigration, is withheld from his family to enable them to leave without hesitation or remorse.

  • Mrs Gummidge – The widow of Daniel Peggotty's partner, who is taken in and supported by Daniel after his partner's death. She is a self-described "lone, lorn creetur" who spends much of her time pining for "the old 'un" (her late husband).

    After Emily runs away with Steerforth, she renounces her self-pity and becomes Daniel and Ham's primary caretaker. She too emigrates to Australia with Daniel and Emily. In Australia, when she receives a marriage proposal, she responds by attacking the unlucky suitor with a bucket.

  • Martha Endell – A young woman, once Little Emily's friend, who flees to London after an unspecified disgrace.

    She falls into prostitution and is stopped from suicide by Daniel Peggotty and David, resolving to help them recover Emily. She emigrates with the Peggotty family to Australia, where she marries an outback farmer.

  • Mr Creakle – The harsh headmaster of young David's boarding school, Salem House, who is assisted by the one-legged Tungay.

    Mr Creakle is a friend of Mr Murdstone. He singles out David for extra torment at Murdstone's request, but later treats him normally after David apologises to Murdstone. With a surprising amount of delicacy, Creakle's wife breaks the news to David that his mother has died. Later, he becomes a Middlesex magistrate and is considered 'enlightened' for his day.

    He runs his prison by the system and is portrayed with great sarcasm, as he thinks that his model inmates, Heep and Littimer, have changed their criminal ways because of his intervention.

  • James Steerforth – A student at Creakle's school who befriends young David, even as he takes over David's money. He is condescending to other social classes, a snob who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his younger friends and uses his mother's influence, going so far as to get Mr Mell dismissed from the school because Mell's mother lives in an almshouse.

    Although he grows into a charming and handsome young man, he proves to be lacking in character when he seduces and later abandons Little Em'ly. He eventually drowns at Yarmouth in a fierce storm at sea, washing up on the shore after the merchant ship breaks apart.

  • Tommy Traddles – David's friend from Salem House.

    Traddles is one of the few boys who does not trust Steerforth and is notable for drawing skeletons on his slate. (David speculates that this is to cheer himself up with the macabre thought that his predicaments are only temporary.) He and David meet again later and become lifelong friends. Traddles works hard but faces great obstacles because of his lack of money and connections.

    He succeeds in making a name and a career for himself, becoming a Judge and marrying his true love, Sophy.

  • Wilkins Micawber – A melodramatic, kind-hearted gentleman who has a way with words and eternal optimism. He befriends David as a young boy in London, taking him as a lodger. Micawber suffers from financial difficulty and spends time in a debtors' prison before moving his family briefly to Plymouth.

    Micawber meets David again, passing by the Heep household in Canterbury when David is taking tea there. Micawber takes a position at Wickfield and Heep. Thinking Micawber is weak-minded, Heep makes him an accomplice in several of his schemes, but Micawber turns the tables on his employer and is instrumental in his downfall. Micawber emigrates to Australia, where he enjoys a successful career as a sheep farmer and becomes a magistrate.

    He is based on Dickens's father, John Dickens, who faced similar financial problems when Dickens was a child, but never emigrated.[4]

  • Emma Micawber – Wilkins Micawber's wife and the mother of their five children. She comes from a wealthy family who disapprove of her husband, but she constantly protests that she will "never leave Micawber!"
  • Mr Dick (Richard Babley) – A slightly deranged, rather childish but amiable man who lives with Betsey Trotwood; they are distant relatives.

    His madness is amply described; he claims to have the "trouble" of King Charles I in his head. He is fond of making gigantic kites and tries to write a "Memorial" (that is, a Petition – though on what subject is never revealed) but is unable to focus and finish it. Despite his limitations, Dick is able to see issues with a certain clarity.

    He proves to be not only a kind and loyal friend but also demonstrates a keen emotional intelligence, particularly when he helps Dr and Mrs Strong through a marriage crisis.

  • Mr Wickfield – The widowed father of Agnes Wickfield and lawyer to Betsey Trotwood. While David attends school in Canterbury, he stays with the Wickfields until he graduates.

    Mr Wickfield feels guilty that, through his love, he has hurt his daughter by keeping her too close to himself. This sense of guilt leads him to drink. His apprentice Uriah Heep uses the information to lead Mr Wickfield down a slippery slope, encouraging the alcoholism and feelings of guilt, and eventually convincing him that he has committed improprieties while inebriated, and blackmailing him.

    He is saved by Mr Micawber, and his friends consider him to have become a better man through the experience.

  • Agnes Wickfield – Mr Wickfield's mature and lovely daughter and close friend of David since he began school at Dr Strong's in Canterbury. Agnes nurtures an unrequited love for David for many years but never tells him, helping and advising him through his infatuation with, and marriage to Dora.

    After David returns to England, he realises his feelings for her, and she becomes David's second wife and mother of their children.

  • Uriah Heep – The main antagonist of the novel's second half, Heep serves first as clerk from age 11 or 12; at age 15 he meets Copperfield and a few years later becomes partner to Mr Wickfield.

    He presents himself as self-deprecating and talks of being "'umble", but gradually reveals his wicked and twisted character. He gains power over Wickfield but is exposed by Wilkins Micawber and Traddles, who have gathered evidence that Uriah committed multiple acts of fraud. By forging Mr Wickfield's signature, he misappropriates the personal wealth of the Wickfield family, together with portfolios entrusted to them by others, including funds belonging to Betsey Trotwood.

    He fools Wickfield into thinking he has himself committed this act while drunk, and then blackmails him. Heep is defeated but not prosecuted. He is later imprisoned for a separate fraud on the Bank of England. He nurtures a deep hatred of David Copperfield and of many others, though in some ways he is a mirror to David, wanting to get ahead and to marry the boss's daughter.

  • Mrs Heep – Uriah's mother, who is as sycophantic as her son.

    She has instilled in him his lifelong tactic of pretending to be subservient to achieve his goals, and even as his schemes fall apart she begs him to save himself by "being 'umble".

  • Dr Strong and Annie Strong – Director and assistant of the school David attends in Canterbury. Dr Strong's main concern is to work on his dictionary, where, at the end of the novel, he has reached the letter D.

    The Doctor is 62 when David meets him, and married about a year to Annie, considerably younger than her husband. In this happy loving couple, each one cares more about the other than about themselves. The depth of their feeling allows them to defeat the efforts of Uriah Heep in trying to break their union.

  • Jack Maldon – A cousin and childhood sweetheart of Annie Strong.

    He continues to bear affection for her and assumes she will leave Dr Strong for him. Instead, Dr Strong helps him financially and in finding a position. Maldon is charming, and after his time in India, he ends up in London society, in a social circle with Julia Mills. They live a life that seems empty to the adult David Copperfield.

  • Julia Mills – She is a friend of Dora who supports Dora's romance with David Copperfield; she moves to India when her father gets a new position.

    She marries a wealthy Scottish man, a "Scotch Croesus", and lives in London in the end. She thinks of little besides money.

  • Mrs Markleham – Annie's mother, nicknamed "The Old Soldier" by her husband's students for her stubbornness. She tries to take pecuniary advantage of her son-in-law Dr Strong in every way possible, to Annie's sorrow.
  • Mrs Emma Steerforth – The wealthy widowed mother of James Steerforth.

    She dotes on her son to the point of being completely blind to his faults. When Steerforth disgraces his family and the Peggottys by running off with Em'ly, Mrs Steerforth blames Em'ly for corrupting her son, rather than accept that James has disgraced an innocent girl. The news of her son's death destroys her.

    She lives on, but she never recovers from the shock.

  • Rosa Dartle – Steerforth's cousin, a bitter, sarcastic spinster who lives with Mrs Steerforth. She is secretly in love with Steerforth and blames others such as Emily and Steerforth's mother for corrupting him. She is described as being thin and displays a visible scar on her lip caused by Steerforth in one of his violent rages as a child.
  • Francis Spenlow – A lawyer, employer of David as a proctor and the father of Dora Spenlow.

    He dies suddenly of a heart attack while driving his phaeton home. After his death, it is revealed that he is heavily in debt, and left no will.

  • Dora Spenlow – The adorable daughter of Mr Spenlow who becomes David's first wife after a long courtship. She is described as being impractical and has many similarities to David's mother.

    In their first year of marriage, David learns their differences as to keeping a house in order. Dora does not learn firmness, but remains herself, affectionate with David and attached to her lapdog, Jip. She is not unaware of their differences, and asks David, whom she calls "Doady", to think of her as a "child-wife".

    She suffers a miscarriage, which begins a long illness from which she dies with David's childhood friend and later second wife Agnes Wickfield at her side.

  • Littimer – Steerforth's obsequious valet (repeatedly described as being "respectable"), who is instrumental in aiding his seduction of Emily. Littimer is always polite and correct but his condescending manner intimidates David, who always feels as if Littimer is reminding him how young he is.

    He later winds up in prison for embezzlement, and his manners allow him to con his way to the stature of Model Prisoner in Creakle's establishment.

  • Miss Mowcher – a dwarf and Steerforth's hairdresser. Though she participates in Steerforth's circle as a witty and glib gossip, she is strong against the discomfort others might feel associated with her dwarfism.

    She is later instrumental in Littimer's arrest.

  • Mr Mell – A poor teacher at Salem House. He takes David to Salem House and is the only adult there who is kind to him. His mother lives in a workhouse, and Mell supports her with his wages. When Steerforth discovers this information from David, he uses it to get Creakle to fire Mell. Near the end of the novel, Copperfield discovers in an Australian newspaper that Mell has emigrated and is now Doctor Mell of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay, married with children.
  • Sophy Crewler – One of a family of ten daughters, Sophy runs the household and takes care of all her sisters.

    She and Traddles are engaged to be married, but her family has made Sophy so indispensable that they do not want her to part from them with Traddles. The pair do eventually marry and settle down happily, and Sophy proves to be an invaluable aid in Traddles's legal career, while still helping her sisters.

  • Mr Sharp – The chief teacher of Salem House, he has more authority than Mr Mell.

    He looks weak, both in health and character; his head seems to be very heavy for him; he walks on one side, and has a big nose.

  • Mr Jorkins – The rarely seen partner of Mr Spenlow. Spenlow uses him as a scapegoat for any unpopular decision he chooses to make, painting Jorkins as an inflexible tyrant, but Jorkins is, in fact, a meek and timid nonentity who, when confronted, takes the same track by blaming his inability to act on Mr Spenlow.

Autobiographical novel

Fragments of autobiography

Between and , Dickens wrote fragments of autobiography, excerpts of which he showed to his wife and John Forster.

Then in he made an attempt at revising it. This was a failure because, as he tells his first love Maria Beadnell (now Mrs Winter), when he began dealing with his youthful love for her, "I lost courage and burned the rest".[12][13] Paul Schlicke points out that in fact not all the pages have gone through the flames and that, as Dickens began writing David Copperfield some pages were unearthed.

  • David copperfield movie
  • David copperfield author
  • David copperfield summary pdf
  • David copperfield summary in 150 words
  • Short summary of david copperfield in 100 words

    • Proof of this is found in the eleventh chapter of the novel: "I begin Life on my own Account and don't like it", where the story of Dickens's experience at the Warren Shoe Factory is told almost verbatim, with the only change, "Mr Micawber" instead of "my father".[4] John Forster also published substantial extracts relating to this period in Dickens's biography, including a paragraph devoted to Wellington House College, which corresponds with the second stage of childhood recounted in the novel.[14] Thus Dickens looks back on his painful past, already evoked by the martyrdom of Little Paul in Dombey and Son, though voiced by an omniscient narrator in that earlier novel.[15] Until Forster published his biography of Dickens in –, no one knew that Dickens had worked in a factory as a child, not even his wife, until Dickens wrote it down and gave the papers to Forster in [16] The first generations of readers did not know this part of David Copperfield's story began like an incident in the author's life.

    The autobiographical dimension

    If David Copperfield has come to be Dickens's "darling", it is because it is the most autobiographical of all his novels.[17] Some of the most painful episodes of his life are barely disguised; others appear indirectly, termed "oblique revelations" by Paul Davis.[17] However, Dickens himself wrote to Forster that the book is not a pure autobiography, but "a very complicated weaving of truth and invention".[3]

    The autobiographical material

    The most important autobiographical material concerns the months that Dickens, still a child, spent at the Warren factory, his diligence with his first love, Maria Beadnell (see Catherine Dickens and Ellen Ternan), and finally his career as a journalist and writer.

    As pointed out by his biographer and friend John Forster, these episodes are essentially factual: the description of forced labour to which David is subjected at Murdstone and Grinby reproduces verbatim the autobiographical fragments entrusted to his friend; David's fascination with Dora Spenlow is similar to that inspired by the capricious Maria; the major stages of his career, from his apprenticeship at Doctors' Commons to writing his first novel, via the shorthand reporting of parliamentary procedures, also follow those of its creator.[17]

    However, this material, like the other autobiographical aspects of the novel, is not systematically reproduced as such.

    The cruel Mr Murdstone is very different from the real James Lamert, cousin to Dickens, being the stepson of Mrs Dickens's mother's sister, who lived with the family in Chatham and Camden Town, and who had found for the young Charles the place of tagger in the shoe factory he managed for his brother-in-law George.[18] The end of this episode looks nothing like what happens in the novel; in reality, contrary to the desire of his mother that he continue to work, it is his father who took him out of the warehouse to send him to school.

    Contrary to Charles's frustrated love for Maria Beadnell, who pushed him back in front of his parents' opposition, David, in the novel, marries Dora Spenlow and, with satisfaction ex post facto, writes Paul Davis, virtually "kills" the recalcitrant stepfather.[17] Finally, David's literary career seems less agitated than that of Dickens, and his results are much less spectacular.

    David's natural modesty alone does not explain all these changes; Paul Davis expresses the opinion that Dickens recounts his life as he would have liked it, and along with "conscious artistry", Dickens knows how to borrow data, integrate them to his original purpose and transform them according to the novelistic necessities, so that "In the end, Copperfield is David's autobiography, not Dickens's".[17]

    Sources and context

    Dickens's past

    David Copperfield is the contemporary of two major memory-based works, William Wordsworth's The Prelude (), an autobiographical poem about the formative experiences of his youth and Tennyson's In Memoriam () which eulogises the memory of his friend, Arthur Hallam.[19][N 2] There is Wordsworth's romantic questioning on the personal development of the individual and there is Tennyson's Victorian confrontation with change and doubt.

    According to Andrew Sanders, David Copperfield reflects both types of response, which give this novel the privileged position of representing the hinge of the century.[20]

    The memories of Dickens are, according to Paul Schlicke, remarkably transmuted into fiction.[19] The experience Dickens lived, as the son of a brazen impenitent, is celebrated through the comic figure of Wilkins Micawber.

    Dickens's youthful passion for Maria Beadnell resurfaces with tenderness, in the form of David's impractical marriage with Dora Spenlow. Dickens's decision to make David a novelist emphasises how he used this book to re-invent himself as a man and artist, "The world would not take another Pickwick from me, but we can be cheerful and merry, and with a little more purpose in us".[21] If the preoccupation with the adventures of a hero, associated with a parade of comic or grotesque characters, looks back to Dickens's earlier novels, the interest in personal development, the pessimistic atmosphere and the complex structure of Copperfield foreshadow other novels.[19]

    Despite never living there, Dickens knew the City of Canterbury well and includes numerous references to it.[22] David Copperfield regularly visits the cathedral services at Canterbury Cathedral,[23] and Mr Micawber wants his son to become a chorister.

    The Guildhall[24] is mentioned when David Copperfield is asked by the barrister to visit. Dr Strong and Annie Markleham get married at St Alphege church,[25] which is also situated prominently in Canterbury.

  • Literary genre ppt
  • Biography as literary genre of david copperfield and wife
  • Literary genre bible

    • Contemporaneous novels

    In , Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's first-person narrative, was acclaimed as soon as it was published. Unlike Thackeray, who adored it, Dickens claims years later never to have read it.[26] True or false, he had encountered Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, a novel that called for understanding and sympathy in a class-eaten society.[27]Thackeray's Pendennis was serialised at the same time as David Copperfield and it depicts its hero's personal and social journey from the countryside to the city.

    A rivalry existed between the two writers, though it preoccupied Thackeray more than Dickens. The most direct literary influence is "obviously Carlyle" who, in a lecture given in , the year of his meeting with Dickens, on "On Heroes, Hero-Worship" and "the Heroic in History", claims that the most important modern character is "the hero as a man of letters".[28][29][20] This is David's destiny, through experience, perseverance and seriousness.[28]

    Development of the novel

    First inspirations

    On 7 January , Dickens visited Norwich and Yarmouth in Norfolk, with two close friends, John Leech (–) and Mark Lemon (–).[30] Leech was an illustrator at Punch, a satirical magazine, and the first illustrator for A Christmas Carol by Dickens in Lemon was a founding editor of Punch, and soon a contributor to Household Words, the weekly magazine Dickens was starting up; he co-authored Mr Nightingale's Diary, a farce, with Dickens in [31][32] The two towns, especially the second, became important in the novel, and Dickens informed Forster that Yarmouth seemed to him to be "the strangest place in the world" and that he would "certainly try my hand at it".[33] During a walk in the vicinity of Yarmouth, Dickens noticed a sign indicating the small locality of Blundeston, which became in his novel the village of "Blunderstone" where David is born and spends his childhood.[15]

    A week after his arrival in Yarmouth, his sixth son, Henry Fielding Dickens, was named after Henry Fielding, his favourite past author.

    Per Forster, Dickens refers to Fielding "as a kind of homage to the novel he was about to write".[34]

    As always with Dickens, when a writing project began, he was agitated, melancholic, "even deeper than the customary birth pangs of other novels";[34] as always, he hesitated about the title, and his working notes contain seventeen variants, "Charles Copperfield" included.[15] After several attempts, he stopped on "The Copperfield Survey of the World as it Rolled", a title that he retained until 19 April.[35] When Forster pointed out that his hero, now called David, has his own initials transposed, Dickens was intrigued and declared that this was a manifestation of his fate.[34] He was not yet sure of his pen: "Though I know what I want to do, I am lumbering like a train wagon",[36] he told Forster.

    No general plan, but an inspired novel

    Contrary to the method previously used for Dombey and Son, Dickens did not elaborate an overall plan and often wrote the summary of a chapter after completing it. Four character names were found at the last moment: Traddles, Barkis, Creakle and Steerforth;[37] the profession of David remains uncertain until the eighth issue (printed in December , containing Chapters 22–24, in which David chooses to be trained as a proctor); and Paul Schlicke notes that the future of Dora was still not determined on 17 May (when 37 chapters had been published in the first 12 monthly instalments).

    Other major aspects of the novel, however, were immediately fixed, such as David's meeting with Aunt Betsey, Emily's fall or Agnes's role as the "real" heroine of the story.[10]

    Once launched, Dickens becomes "quite confident".[38] The most difficult thing was to insert "what I know so well", his experience at the Warren factory; once the threads were woven, however, the truth mixed with fiction, he exulted and congratulated himself in a letter to Forster.[39] From now on, he wrote in this letter, the story "bore him irresistibly along".

    Never, it seems, was he in the grip of failures of inspiration, so "ardent [is his] sympathy with the creatures of the fancy which always made real to him their sufferings or sorrows."[34]

    Changes in detail occur during the composition: on 22 August , while staying on the Isle of Wight for a family vacation, he changed on the advice of Forster, the theme of the obsession of Mr Dick, a secondary character in the novel.

    This theme was originally "a bull in a china shop" and became "King Charles's head" in a nod to the bicentenary of the execution of Charles I of England.[N 3][10]

    Last incidents in the writing

    Although plunged into the writing of his novel, Dickens set out to create a new journal, Household Words,[40] the first issue of which appeared on 31 March This daunting task, however, did not seem to slow down the writing of David Copperfield: I am "busy as a bee", he writes happily to the actor William Macready.[41]

    A serious incident occurred in December: Mrs Jane Seymour Hill, chiropractor to Mrs Dickens,[42] raised the threat of prosecution, because she recognised herself in the portrait of Miss Mowcher; Dickens did not do badly,[43] gradually modifying the psychology of the character by making her less of a caricature and, at the very end of the novel, by making her a friend of the protagonist, whereas at the beginning she served rather contrary purposes.[42] This was, writes Harry Stone, "the only major departure from his original plans".[44]

    His third daughter was born on 16 August , called Dora Annie Dickens, the same name as his character's first wife.

    The baby died nine months later after the last serial was issued and the book was published.[10]

    Dickens marked the end of his manuscript on 21 October [10] and felt both torn and happy like every time he finished a novel: "Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what Copperfield makes me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I should be turned inside out!

    I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World."[45][10]

    At first glance, the work is modelled in the loose and somewhat disjointed way of "personal histories" that was very popular in the United Kingdom of the 18th century;[N 4] but in reality, David Copperfield is a carefully structured and unified novel.

    It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a rather bleak painting of the conditions of childhood in Victorian England, notoriously when the troublesome children are parked in infamous boarding schools, then he strives to trace the slow social and intimate ascent of a young man who, painfully providing for the needs of his good aunt while continuing his studies, ends up becoming a writer: the story, writes Paul Davis, of "a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding".[9]

    Publication in monthly instalments

    "The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery"[N 5] was published from 1 May to 1 November in 19 monthly one-shilling instalments, containing 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"), with a title cover simplified to The Personal History of David Copperfield.

    The last instalment was a double-number.

    Literary genre ppt: As virtuous as anyone else, she claims, especially that Emily, she does not recognize any ideal family, each being moulded in the manner of its social class, nor any affiliation as a woman: she is Rosa Dartle, in herself. His goal is to gain power in a world that has denied him any, due to his position in the lower class. Ambitions and proud, Mr. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.

    On the other side of the Atlantic, John Wiley & Sons and G. P. Putnam published a monthly edition, then a two-volume book version.

    • I – May (chapters 1–3);
    • II – June (chapters 4–6);
    • III – July (chapters 7–9);
    • IV – August (chapters 10–12);
    • V – September (chapters 13–15);
    • VI – October (chapters 16–18);
    • VII – November (chapters 19–21);
    • VIII – December (chapters 22–24);
    • IX – January (chapters 25–27);
    • X – February (chapters 28–31);
    • XI – March (chapters 32–34);
    • XII – April (chapters 35–37);
    • XIII – May (chapters 38–40);
    • XIV – June (chapters 41–43);
    • XV – July (chapters 44–46);
    • XVI – August (chapters 47–50);
    • XVII – September (chapters 51–53);
    • XVIII – October (chapters 54–57);
    • XIX-XX – November (chapters 58–64).

    Point of view

    Whatever the borrowings from Dickens's own life, the reader knows as an essential precondition, that David Copperfield is a novel and not an autobiography; a work with fictional events and characters – including the hero-narrator – who are creations of Dickens's imagination.

    First person narrator

    The use of the first person determines the point of view: the narrator Copperfield, is a recognised writer, married to Agnes for more than ten years, who has decided to speak in public about his past life. This recreation, in itself an important act, can only be partial and also biased, since, a priori, Copperfield is the only viewpoint and the only voice; not enjoying the prerogatives of the third person, omnipotence, ubiquity, clairvoyance, he relates only what he witnessed or participated in:[46] all the characters appear in his presence or, failing that, he learns through hearsay, before being subjected to his pen through the prism of his conscience, deformed by the natural deficit of his perception and accentuated by the selective filter of memory.[47] Story teller and teacher, Copperfield does not let the facts speak for themselves, but constantly asserts himself as master of the narrative game, and he intervenes, explains, interprets and comments.

    His point of view is that of the adult he has become, as he expresses himself just as he is writing. At the end of his book, he feels a writer's pride to evoke "the thread[s] in the web I have spun".[48]

    Gareth Cordery writes that "if David Copperfield is the paradigmatic Bildungsroman, it is also the quintessential novel of memory"[49] and as such, according to Angus Wilson, the equal of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu).[50] The memory of the hero engages so intensely with his memories that the past seems present:

    How well I recollect the kind of day it was!

    I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar-frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and rap their feet upon the floor.[51]

    In such passages, which punctuate the retrospective chapters, the relived moment replaces the lived, the historical present seals the collapse of the original experience and the recreation of a here and now that seizes the entire field of consciousness.[52] Sometimes this resurrected experience is more vivid than reality; so, in Chapter 41, about Traddles's face, he says: "His honest face, he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his head impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality."[53] These are "sacred moments", writes Gareth Cordery, which Copperfield has carefully guarded in "the treasure chambers"[N 6] of his memory, where sings "the music of time":[52] "secret prose, that sense of a mind speaking to itself with no one there to listen".[54]

    Without being Dickens, this narrator, Copperfield, is very like him and often becomes his spokesperson.

    It adds to his point of view, directly or indirectly, that of the author, without there necessarily being total match between the two. As such, Copperfield serves as "medium", mirror and also screen, Dickens sometimes subverting his speech to get to the forefront or, on the contrary, hide behind this elegant delegate to the nimble pen.

    Dickens's voice, however, is in general well concealed and, according to Gareth Cordery, the most difficult to detect because mostly present by implication.[55] To help hear his voice, he adds, it is advisable to turn to Phiz, whose illustrations bring a point of view which is not always in agreement with that of Copperfield.

    For example, in chapter 21, the two friends arrive by surprise at the Peggotty home, and Copperfield presents Steerforth to Emily at the very moment when her betrothal with Ham has just been announced. This sudden intrusion stops the girl as she has just jumped from Ham's arms to nestle in those of Mr Peggotty, a sign, says Cordery in passing, that the promise of marriage is as much for the uncle as for the nephew.

    The text remains brief but Phiz interprets, anticipates the events, denounces even the future guilt of Copperfield: all eyes are on the girl, her bonnet, emblem of her social aspirations and her next wanderings with Steerforth, is ready to be seized. Copperfield, dressed as a gentleman, stands in the doorway, one finger pointing at Steerforth who is taller by one head, the other measuring the gap between Ham and Dan Peggotty, as if offering Emily to his friend.

    Emily, meanwhile, still has her head turned to Ham but the body is withdrawn and the look has become both challenging and provocative. Phiz brings together in a single image a whole bunch of unwritten information, which Dickens approved and probably even suggested.[56]

    Reader's insight

    A third perspective is the point of view of the discerning reader who, although generally carried away by sympathy for the narrator's self-interested pleading, does not remain blissfully ignorant and ends up recognizing the faults of the man and of the writer, just as the reader also learns to identify and gauge the covert interventions of the author.

    The discerning reader listens to the adult Copperfield and hears what this adult wants or does not want them to hear. "Even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine", (chapter 42)[57] the book exists, and the reader becomes ipso facto a "father-confessor",[52] knowing how to judge and even, at times, to doubt the sincerity of the emotion expressed.

    So, when Dora dies, the reader sees that the topic of grief is dropped in a hurry, as if Copperfield had more important things to do than to indulge in sorrow: "this is not the time at which I am to enter a state of mind beneath its load of sorrow",[58] which creates a question and an embarrassment: is Copperfield protecting himself from his confusion, or does he shed some crocodile tears for form?

    Copperfield also examines some of his most culpable weaknesses, such as unconscious connivance (his "own unconscious part") in the defilement of the Peggotty home by Steerforth, which he remains forever incapable of opposing: "I believe that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach."(chapter 32)[59] The same treatment is given to his childhood love, his so much idealised Emily, who, once "fallen", is expelled from his consciousness to the point where his last comment, when he stealthily sees her aboard the ship leaving for Australia, is "a masterpiece of narrative duplicity": far from seeing in her what she has become, a real woman, he takes refuge behind the image of a pathetic religious icon elegantly allowing him to remove his own guilt for betraying her.[60]

    These underground currents are thus revealed in David's psychological struggle, Gareth Cordery concludes, currents that his narrative unconsciously attempts to disguise.[61]

    Recapitulation of plot structure

    The plot line

    The story is a road from which different paths leave.

    The road is that of David's life, the main plot; the branches are born of meetings with him and lead to several secondary intrigues taken more or less far along. Each is represented by an important figure: Mr Micawber, Steerforth, little Emily, Uriah Heep; there are side stories, that of Martha Endell, Rosa Dartle, and, along the main road, stretch some parallel paths on which the reader is from time to time invited: the Traddles, Betsey Trotwood, the Peggotty family, Dan and Ham in particular, Peggotty herself remaining from start to finish intimately related to David.

    The different tracks do not move away from the main avenue, and when they do, a narrative "forceps" brings them together again. Hence the retrospective chapters and the ultimate recapitulation were written.[62]

    The necessary summaries

    The narrative is linear in appearance, as is usual in traditional first-person form.

    It covers the narrator's life until the day he decides to put an end to his literary endeavor. However, whole sections of his life are summarised in a few paragraphs, or sometimes just a sentence or two, indicating that three or ten years have passed, or that Dora is dead, necessary to keep the story moving along. Thus, the long stay of reflection in Switzerland which leads to the recognition of love for Agnes, or the lapse of time before the final chapter, are all blanks in the story.

    Besides the hero, this story concerns important secondary characters such as Mr Micawber or Uriah Heep, or Betsey Trotwood and Traddles, the few facts necessary for a believable story are parsimoniously distilled in the final chapters: an impromptu visit to a prison, the unexpected return of Dan Peggotty from the Antipodes; so many false surprises for the narrator who needs them to complete each person's personal story.

    As such, the epilogue that represents the last chapter (Ch 64) is a model of the genre, a systematic review, presumably inspired by his memory, without true connection.

    Biography as literary genre of david copperfield After the man leaves, Aunt Betsey admits that he is her husband and that she has been giving him money since they separated because he has been destitute. The gulf between the rich and poor widened each year. Retrieved 25 January This includes the plight of so-called "fallen women", and prostitutes, as well as the attitude of middle-class society to these women; the status of women in marriage; the rigid class structure; the prison system; educational standards, and emigration to the colonies of what was becoming the British Empire.

    There is the desire to finish with each one, with forced exclamations and ecstatic observations, scrolling through the lives of those who are frozen in time: Dick with his "Memorial" and his kite, Dr Strong and his dictionary, and as a bonus, the news of David's "least child", which implies that there have been other children between him and eldest child Agnes of whom the reader has never heard by name.

    So also goes the story of Dan Peggotty relating the sad tale of his niece. The four chapters called "Retrospect" (Chapter "A Retrospect", Chapter "Another Retrospect", Chapter "Another Retrospect" and Chapter "A Last Retrospect") are placed at strategic moments of the general discourse, which play a catch-up role more than one of meditation by the narrator, without venturing into event details.

    Here, the narration has disappeared, it has given way to a list, an enumeration of events.[63]

    Restructuring a posteriori

    Dickens's approach, as shown in David Copperfield, does not escape what fr:Georges Gusdorf calls "the original sin of autobiography", that is to say a restructuring a posteriori and in this, paradoxically, it demonstrates its authenticity.[64] It consists of splitting one's life into parts, choosing decisive phases, identifying an evolution and endowing them with a direction and then a meaning, whereas, from day to day, existence has been lived as a cluster of shapeless perceptions requiring an immediate adaptation, that captures at best in the novel the use of the historical present generally adopted by Dickens.

    It is a succession of autonomous moments which do not end up amalgamating in a coherent whole and that connect the tenuous thread of the "I" recognizing each other. In this reconstruction, one part of truth and the other of poetry, the famous Dichtung und Wahrheit (From my Life: Poetry and Truth; –), autobiography of Goethe, there is the obligatory absence of objectivity, the promotion of oblivion as an integral part of memory, the ruling power of the subjectivity of time found.[65]

    Thus, to use George Gusdorf's words again, David Copperfield appears as a "second reading of a man's experience", in this case, Charles Dickens, when he reached the fullness of his career, tried to give "a meaning to his legend".[66]

    Themes

    This novel's main theme arises from the fact that it is a bildungsroman, a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, which is common in Dickens's novels,[67] and in which character change is extremely important.[68][69] The changes involve David leaving past selves behind on the way to maturity.

    Other important themes relate especially to Dickens's social concerns, and his desire for reform. This includes the plight of so-called "fallen women", and prostitutes, as well as the attitude of middle-class society to these women; the status of women in marriage; the rigid class structure; the prison system; educational standards, and emigration to the colonies of what was becoming the British Empire.

    The latter was a way for individuals to escape some of the rigidity of British society and start anew. Some of these subjects are directly satirized, while others are worked into the novel in more complex ways by Dickens.

    Bildungsroman

    Different names

    Copperfield's path to maturity is marked by the different names assigned to him: his mother calls him "Davy"; Murdstone calls him as "Brooks of Sheffield"; for Peggotty's family, he is "Mas'r Davy"; en route to boarding school from Yarmouth, he appears as "Master Murdstone"; at Murdstone and Grinby, he is known as "Master Copperfield"; Mr Micawber is content with "Copperfield"; for Steerforth he is "Daisy"; he becomes "Mister Copperfield" with Uriah Heep; and "Trotwood", soon shortened to "Trot" for Aunt Betsey; Mrs Crupp deforms his name into "Mr Copperfull"; and for Dora he is "Doady".[70] While striving to earn his real name once and for all, this plethora of names reflects the fluidity of Copperfield's personal and social relationships, and obscure his real identity.

    It is by writing his own story, and giving him his name in the title, that Copperfield can finally assert who he is.[70]

    A series of lives

    David's life can be seen as a series of lives, each one in radical disjunction from what follows, writes Paul Davis.[71] The young boy in the warehouse differs from Blunderstone Rookery's child, or Salem House student, and overall David strives to keep these parts of himself disconnected from each other.

    For example, in Chapter 17, while attending Canterbury School, he met Mr Micawber at Uriah Heep's, and a sudden terror gripped him that Heep could connect him, such as he is today, and the abandoned child who lodged with the Micawber family in London.[71]

    So many mutations indicate the name changes, which are sometimes received with relief: "Trotwood Copperfield", when he finds refuge in Dover at his Aunt Betsey's house, so the narrator writes, "Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me." Then, he realised "that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life" and "that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's".[72]

    There is a process of forgetfulness, a survival strategy developed by memory, which poses a major challenge to the narrator; his art, in fact, depends on the ultimate reconciliation of differences in order to free and preserve the unified identity of his being a man.

    "Will I be the hero of my own life?"

    David opens his story with a question: Will I be the hero of my own life? This means that he does not know where his approach will lead him, that writing itself will be the test. As Paul Davis puts it, "In this Victorian quest narrative, the pen might be lighter than the sword, and the reader will be left to judge those qualities of the man and the writer that constitute heroism.[17]

    However, question implies an affirmation: it is Copperfield, and no one else, who will determine his life, the future is delusory, since the games are already played, the life has been lived, with the novel being only the story.

    Copperfield is not always the hero of his life, and not always the hero of his story, as some characters have a stronger role than him,[73] Besides Steerforth, Heep, Micawber, for example, he often appears passive and lightweight. Hence, concludes Paul Davis, the need to read his life differently; it is more by refraction through other characters that the reader has a true idea of the "hero" of the story.

    What do these three men reveal to him, and also to Dora, whom he marries?[71] Another possible yardstick is a comparison with the other two "writers" of the novel, Dr Strong and Mr Dick. The dictionary of Strong will never be completed and, as a story of a life, will end with the death of its author.

    As for Mr Dick, his autobiographical project constantly raises the question of whether he can transcend the incoherence and indecision of his subject-narrator. Will he be able to take the reins, provide a beginning, a middle, an end? Will he succeed in unifying the whole, in overcoming the trauma of the past, his obsession with the decapitated royal head, so as to make sense of the present and find a direction for the future?

    According to Paul Davis, only Copperfield succeeds in constructing a whole of his life, including suffering and failure, as well as successes, and that is "one measure of his heroism as a writer".[71]

    The weight of the past

    The past "speaks" especially to David, "a child of close observation" (chapter 2); the title of this chapter is: "I observe",[74] and as an adult he is endowed with a remarkable memory.[75] So much so that the story of his childhood is realised so concretely that the narrator, like the reader, sometimes forgets that it is a lived past and not a present that is given to see.

    The past tense verb is often the preterite for the narrative, and the sentences are often short independent propositions, each one stating a fact. Admittedly, the adult narrator intervenes to qualify or provide an explanation, without, however, taking precedence over the child's vision. And sometimes, the story is prolonged by a reflection on the functioning of the memory.

    So, again in chapter 2, the second and third paragraphs comment on the first memory of the two beings surrounding David, his mother, and Peggotty:

    I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other.

    I have an impression on my mind, which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty's forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
    This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go further back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy.

    Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.[74]

    David thus succeeds, as George Orwell puts it, in standing "both inside and outside a child's mind",[17] a particularly important double vision effect in the first chapters.

    The perspective of the child is combined with that of the adult narrator who knows that innocence will be violated and the feeling of security broken. Thus, even before the intrusion of Mr Murdstone as step-father or Clara's death, the boy feels "intimations of mortality".[17] In the second chapter for example, when David spends a day with Mr Murdstone, during the first episode of "Brooks of Sheffield"[N 7][76][77] in which, first blow to his confidence, he realises little by little that Mr Murdstone and his comrade Quinion are mocking him badly:

    'That's Davy,' returned Mr Murdstone.
    'Davy who?' said the gentleman.

    'Jones?'
    'Copperfield' said Mr Murdstone.
    'What! Bewitching Mrs Copperfield's incumbrance?' cried the gentleman. 'The pretty little widow?'
    'Quinion,' said Mr Murdstone, 'take care, if you please. Somebody's sharp.'
    'Who is?' asked the gentleman laughing.
    I looked up quickly, being curious to know.
    'Only Brooks of Sheffield', said Mr Murdstone.
    I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield, for, at first, I really thought it was I.

    There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr Murdstone was a good deal amused also.[78]

    The final blow, brutal and irremediable this time, is the vision, in chapter 9, of his own reflection in his little dead brother lying on the breast of his mother: "The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had once been, hushed forever on her bosom".[79]

    A series of male models for David

    David Copperfield is a posthumous child, that is, he was born after his father died.[80] From birth, his aunt is the authority who stands in for the deceased father, and she decides Copperfield's identity by abandoning him because he is not female.

    His first years are spent with women, two Claras,[N 8] his mother and Peggotty, which, according to Paul Davis, "undermines his sense of masculinity".[17] Hence a sensitivity that the same critic calls "feminine", made-up of a lack of confidence, naive innocence and anxiety, like that of his mother, who was herself an orphan.

    Steerforth is not mistaken, when from the outset he calls Copperfield "Daisy"–a flower of spring, symbol of innocent youth. To forge an identity as a man and learn how to survive in a world governed by masculine values, instinctively, he looks for a father figure who can replace that of the father he did not have.

    Several male models will successively offer themselves to him: the adults Mr Murdstone, Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep, his comrades Steerforth and Traddles.

    Mr Murdstone

    Mr Murdstone darkens Copperfield's life instead of enlightening him, because the principle of firmness which he champions, absolute novelty for the initial family unit, if he instills order and discipline, kills spontaneity and love. The resistance that Copperfield offers him is symbolic: opposing a usurper without effective legitimacy, he fails to protect his mother but escapes the straitjacket and achieves his independence.

    Mr Murdstone thus represents the anti-father, double negative of the one of which David was deprived, model a contrario of what it is not necessary to be.

    Biography as literary genre of david copperfield crossword Pathos and indulgent humour [ edit ]. After the confrontation, Mr. Murdstone is a controlling, brutal man who David notes, "ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog. Peggotty decides to take her and Mrs.

    Mr Micawber

    The second surrogate father is just as ineffective, although of a diametrically opposed personality: it is Mr Micawber who, for his part, lacks firmness to the point of sinking into irresponsibility. Overflowing with imagination and love, in every way faithful and devoted, inveterate optimist, he eventually becomes, in a way, the child of David who helps him to alleviate his financial difficulties.

    The roles are reversed and, by the absurdity, David is forced to act as a man and to exercise adult responsibilities towards him. However, the Micawbers are not lacking in charm, the round Wilkins, of course, but also his dry wife, whose music helps her to live. Mrs Micawber has, since childhood, two songs in her repertoire, the Scottish "The dashing white sergeant"[81] and the American lament "The little Tafflin with the Silken Sash",[82] whose attraction has decided her husband to "win that woman or perish in the attempt"[83] In addition to the melodies that soothe and embellish, the words of the second, with her dream "Should e'er the fortune be my lot to be made a wealthy bride!" and her aphorism "Like attracts like" have become emblematic of the couple, one is the opposite of reality and the other the very definition of its harmony.[84]

    Uriah Heep

    New avatar of this quest, Uriah Heep is "a kind of negative mirror to David".[71] Heep is clever at enlarging the pathos of his humble origins, for example, which ability he exploits shamelessly to attract sympathy and mask an unscrupulous ambition; while David, on the other hand, tends to suppress his modest past and camouflage his social ambitions under a veneer of worldly mistrust, prompting Paul Davis to conclude that, just as Mr Murdstone is adept at firmness, Heep, in addition to being a rascal, lacks the so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity which David does not lose.[71]

    Steerforth